MusicRadar

1 of 4 » View in gallery

• Review

How much? Yep, let's not beat about the bush, AC Zemaitis guitars do not fall into the cheap category - but not only do they capture the style of the late and legendary Tony Zemaitis but, you've got to admit, they do look pretty cool, huh?

Looks were a crucial ingredient of the original Zemaitis guitars. They were primarily 'stage' guitars, meant to stand out from the crowd - something that the Metal Front, Pearl Front and Disc Front guitars, Zemaitis' best-known designs, certainly did.

A year after Zemaitis passed away in 2002 his wife and son made an agreement with the Japanese corporation Kanda Shokai to ensure the continuation of Zemaitis Guitars. The high-end AC Zemaitis guitars are made in small numbers in a Japanese custom shop; while the Greco versions, licensed from Zemaitis International, are more affordable and made in higher numbers.

Build

Zemaitis made his first "half decent" guitar in 1955 (it was a classical) but it was 10 years before he became self-employed, in 1969. It was "around this time," Tony told us in the early nineties, that "electrics were introduced".

Zemaitis had learnt the old-school way as an apprentice cabinet-maker prior to making that first guitar. He knew wood and how to work it. But a decade of making acoustics, not to mention being a fledgling player, gave him understanding of acoustic principles in both acoustic and electric guitars.

His electric bodies were always three-piece, as here. "It helps to keep the resonance very high and 'wolf' notes down," said Tony. The tops of the Metal Front, Disc Front and inlaid top guitars were always slightly curved (pearl fronts were more carved, Les Paul-style), "so onstage the light dances over it instead of flashing when it's totally flat - like Alf Garnett's glasses!"

Here, the body depth is 40mm but, thanks to that slight top curve, the overall thickness is greater at 44mm, including the 1.5mm thick Duralumin (an old name used for a lightweight aluminium alloy widely employed in aircraft building, containing copper, magnesium, and manganese) facing.

The neck-to-body joint is simple but very effective. The full width of the neck slots into the body; there's a small lip on the treble side which ends with a distinctive curve at its front. There's no heel, the neck just sits over the square corner of the cutaway single-cut design - a more gaunt-looking Les Paul.

There are no contour cuts, but the back of the spiky treble horn is chamfered away, which has little practical advantage, but does match the underside of the tip of the elegant and distinctive 'Z' head, which is again nicely carved away - both are original Zemaitis traits. The three-piece neck design is again typical of Zemaitis: the harder centre section would be quarter-sawn, the two outer pieces diagonally grain-matched. It's hard to see if that matching is followed here but it's clearly a three-piece. In terms of depth the neck is 21mm at the first fret and 23mm at the 12th with quite a classic 'C' oval.